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I use the ampersand in the body of my these when I need to say "and"… often, you can imagine! After open my document, I use:

makeampletter \def\makeampletter{\catcode`\&11\relax}

If I need to put a table, I turn:

makeampcolsep \def\makeampcolsep{\catcode`\&4\relax}

That's my way, because I don't know how to transform my "and", or my "et" in french, in "&" (historically, "&" is the ligature of "et"). Furthermore, if I transform all "and" or "et" in "&", I'll turn all "Brandies" in "Br&ies" and all "Cabernet" in "Cabern&", perplexing. &, I don't want to start my sentences with "&". There could be a solution: transform as a ligature only if the conjunction is between spaces or punctuation « et » or " and " or « -et- », and if the world is in lower case... If you can build this solution, I'll take it. So, I write with "&" in my text. Sometimes, I know, it's a bad idea, in tables, in titles, in labels etc. I bypass. But, I need to use "&" in glossaries descriptions. I show in the MWE a little program who explain why \&, \&\, or {\&} are not good solutions for me (space management, correspondence with other functions).

Here is my question: to freely use the ampersand, how to automatise the use of & sign in all descriptions of glossary entries ? Use my friendly programs makeampletter & makeampcolsep, but where ?

% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode 
% !TEX TS-program = arara
\documentclass{scrbook} 
\def\makeampletter{\catcode`\&11\relax}
\newcommand\ampersandtrip[2]{\newglossaryentry{#1}{name=#1,type=main,description={#2}}#2\footnote{\gls{#1}}}

\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{and}{name=and,description={I want to use my &!}}% \&
\newglossaryentry{et}{name=et,description={Je veux utiliser mon & !}}% \&

\begin{document}
\makeampletter
\gls{and} & \gls{et}

\section*{Trip 1}\glsentrydesc{trip1}\\\ampersandtrip{trip1}{You \& me}
\section*{Trip 2}\glsentrydesc{trip2}\\\ampersandtrip{trip2}{Toi \&  moi}
\section*{Trip 3}\glsentrydesc{trip3}\\\ampersandtrip{trip3}{You \&\ me}
\section*{Trip 4}\glsentrydesc{trip4}\\\ampersandtrip{trip4}{Toi {\&} moi}

\printglossary
\end{document}
% arara: xelatex
% arara: makeglossaries
% arara: xelatex

It sounds silly, but I need it. Thanks!

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  • 1
    it is probably simpler to input the ampersand as \& than to try to make it temporarily into an ordinary character. since that is a non-letter "control symbol", it won't gobble the space that follows in the input, so if you want a space there, you can input it without doing anything special. – barbara beeton Jun 27 '16 at 20:26
  • @barbarabeeton thanks for your comment. I have some homemade programs who imports texts from my body to glossaries description, & after fly again to another site of my body with \glsentrydesc. So, through these trips, spaces politic after \& are different. Ok, I edit my post for explain this necessity. – Zouib Jun 27 '16 at 22:11
  • 2
    One problem here is that by defining your entries in the document, on the next run the definitions will occur at \begin{document} when the .glsdefs file is read in, so the change in catcode comes too late for those entries. – Nicola Talbot Jun 27 '16 at 22:48
  • 1
    I'm not sure why you don't set the category code to 12, instead of 11. – egreg Jun 27 '16 at 23:04
  • @egreg excellent observation ! It saves the spaces problem :) – Zouib Jun 27 '16 at 23:13
3

Use \catcode`&=12, not 11 and use \makeampletter before defining the glossary entries.

\documentclass{scrbook} 

\newcommand\makeampletter{\catcode`\&=12\relax}
\newcommand\ampersandtrip[2]{%
  \newglossaryentry{#1}{
    name=#1,
    type=main,
    description={#2},
  }%
  #2\footnote{\gls{#1}}%
}

\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries

\makeampletter
\newglossaryentry{and}{name=and,description={I want to use my &!}}% \&
\newglossaryentry{et}{name=et,description={Je veux utiliser mon & !}}% \&

\begin{document}
\gls{and} & \gls{et}

\section*{Trip 1}

\glsentrydesc{trip1}
\ampersandtrip{trip1}{You & me}

\section*{Trip 2}

\glsentrydesc{trip2}
\ampersandtrip{trip2}{Toi &  moi}

\section*{Trip 3}

\glsentrydesc{trip3}
\ampersandtrip{trip3}{You \& me}

\section*{Trip 4}

\glsentrydesc{trip4}
\ampersandtrip{trip4}{Toi \& moi}

\printglossary
\end{document}

% arara: xelatex
% arara: makeglossaries
% arara: xelatex

enter image description here

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  • 1
    This is literally the real life case of xkcd.com/1172 – percusse Jun 27 '16 at 23:43
  • What's the way to undo \makeampletter? That is, I think I'm asking, what should be the definition of \makeampother? – Quuxplusone Feb 28 '17 at 23:01
  • @Quuxplusone \newcommand{\makeampamp}{\catcode`\&=4\relax} – egreg Feb 28 '17 at 23:05

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